element14.com, the world’s largest electronic design community, has announced the winning designs of its “Bluetooth Unleashed” Design Challenge, which included a smart doorbell, enhanced exercise bike and even a device to improve the ambiance in a room. As one of five challenges that the element14 community and Newark element14 runs each year, 20 community members were tasked with uniquely showcasing the power of Bluetooth technology by building a prototype using a top Bluetooth development board. Challengers were encouraged to think creatively about how Bluetooth can be used to solve everyday problems.

“At Newark element14, we’re proud to have a community that is always pushing the limits of design and creativity,” said Dianne Kibbey, Global Head of Community and Social Media for the element14 community and Newark element14. “The Bluetooth Unleashed Design Challenge was a great opportunity for our community members to demonstrate their own creativity and new ideas when using such a limitless technology.”

Judges selected three winners of the Bluetooth Design Challenge:

• Grand Prize – Shabaz Yousaf, UK – The Smart Doorbell Shabaz created is one of the most super-powered and well-engineered doorbells the judges had ever seen. It features Texas Instruments CC2640R2 LaunchPad board, custom PCBs and Bluetooth Low Energy. His blog posts throughout the challenge were polished, fun and informative. Visit https://bit.ly/2KCnXsz to see Shabaz’s complete project video.

• Runner up – Yuri Tikhonov, Russia – The Smart Exercise Bike Computer is an exercise machine that has been upgraded with the NXP FRDM-KW41Z. Tikhonov also encouraged others to follow his formula by sharing his math and experimentation in his blog posts. Visit https://bit.ly/2nmuApA to find out more about Yuri’s project.

• 3rd Prize – Sakthivigneshwar R, India – AAPSAD (Adaptive Ambiance for People with Stress and Depression) is a mood sensing room ambiance system with facial recognition. If it detects that someone is upset, it disperses aroma therapy, plays a soothing image and changes the lighting. The design is made with Arduino Mega, Raspberry Pi and Bluetooth. Find out more at https://bit.ly/2M3HQOD

The team also selected nine challengers to receive a “finisher prize pack” for successfully completing the 11-week build challenge which includes a Pocket Beagle Bone, Tenma Fume Extractor, Tenma Soldering Station, and element14 Community Backpack.

Newark element14, the Development Distributor, is proud to be a “champion for makers,” making the broadest range of single board computers and development kits available to the maker market and supporting those customers, through their 500,000-strong global member community, element14.